of the Land Tribunal proposed to be instituted, and ask them to issue to him £10,000 of Debentures, say of £100 each or any other fixed sum, all being of equal amount, having equal priority, and bearing an equal rate of interest, which of course will be the market interest of the day; but as the security would be of the very first order, the Interest would be extremely low, seldom exceeding three, or perhaps even two per cent. One advantage of this system would be, that the landowner could pay off the debt at his convenience, and in driblets. Whenever he has £100 he can make provision for paying off one of the £100 Debentures; and thus gradually lessen the charge upon his property."

3.-In continental countries much benefit has attended the operations of the system. Mr. Pollard Urquhart, M.P., in his work on the "Land Credit Companies of Prussia," has shewn that a system of Land Debentures has been long established in Silesia, and other parts of the Kingdom of Prussia, and that the Prussian Land Debentures are made payable to bearer, and may pass from hand to hand like bank notes, or drafts on a banker.

In the evidence given before the Industrial Savings' Committee it was also pointed out that—

"In England, dealings in land are a luxury, which a rich man may indulge in, but a poor man cannot indulge in.

"In Belgium there is a class we should call stockbrokers, but they are mainly connected with dealings in land, Mortgages, and transactions in Land; and any person wishing to invest a large or small sum going to them, has no greater difficulty in having the transaction arranged, safely and properly, than we have in buying stock, and going to a broker for that purpose. It is just as simple and as easy.

“In Hamburgh and in Frankfort, all persons such as our Bankers and Brokers, if they have any money that they wish to make available, instead of laying it out, as our bankers would, in the funds, or in Exchequer Bills, or other securities, would invest it in land, which we, according to the present state of the law, do not consider an available security. The difference is, in fact, quite reversed. A banker in Frankfort takes this Investment in Land as not only the safest and the best, but because it is the most readily turned into money, with less deductions or less influence from any circumstances. They prefer those securities to Bonds or to Bills, or to any other securities that are at all available to them as men dealing in money.

"The Government also have a great advantage from the constant dealings with land. It brings in a Stamp duty, and a much larger sum is raised in that manner, by way of Revenue, than is raised in this country."

With respect to the beneficial effects of Land Debentures, similar opinions were thus expressed by an economist of great authority in his evidence before the same Committee :

:

"In Germany, one of the safest and most usual investments for small sums is in a kind of land debentures. The Mortgages there were divided into shares, and the documents which conferred the right to those shares were very generally in use as Investments by all classes, and were found very convenient, and increased very much the facilities of mortgaging land for its value. They also increased the value of land."

SECTION III.

Of Farming and Land Societies in Ireland and other parts of the Kingdom.

ART. 4.-In connection with Parts I. and II., we think it opportune to bring prominently forward the subject of "Cooperative Farming and Land Societies," which has received a practical impulse, both in Ireland and in England, during the present year. It opens up a system by which the Government can do good service to the small Tenants, viz., by facilitating their associating together in such societies to be established under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 1876, in every suitable district. For this purpose all that would be needed would be loans from the State to the societies at some reasonable rate of interest. A slight margin over the Savings Banks rate paid by the nation would suffice.

As we have explained at some length in another work (“Industrial Investment and Emigration "), the establishment of Land investment societies in agricultural districts is much wanted. By them alone can that growing tendency to accumulate land in the hands of a few persons be counteracted, which is noticeable in respect to landed property all over the country.

The many thousand of small freeholds, which might be found a century and a half ago scattered over the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, have been gradually collected into large estates, the property of a few wealthy individuals. A change has consequently taken place in the character of the agricultural classes. The old Yeoman, with his few paternal acres of land, his high spirit and independence, has given place to tenants of various classes, sometimes farming on a greater scale than he did, but

holding, by leasehold tenure, the lands which were formerly divided into separate freeholds.

5.-The area, however, returned as under cultivation in Great Britain has increased, since 1870, according to the Board of Trade Report of 1880, by no less than 1,694,000 acres, or a greater area than the whole of Devonshire. Much of this reported increase of the area under cultivation is not, as Mr. Giffin points out, due to progressive advance in the reclamation of mountain, moor, and bog, inasmuch as a considerable share of it must be ascribed to greater accuracy in making out the returns; but when ample allowance is made on this ground, the fact remains that waste land is continually being brought under cultivation in the wilder parts of the country, a fact which cannot but be regarded as encouraging even in the midst of agricultural depression.

With regard to the size of holdings, the 1880 Board of Trade Report says:

"On comparing the principal results with the figures of 1875, when the last return of this kind was obtained, the proportionate acreage of the large and small holdings seems to have undergone little change. Thus for Great Britain the area held in occupations of 50 acres and under is still 15 per cent. of the Total, that between 50 and 100 acres also 15 per cent., between 100 and 300 42 per cent., from 300 to 500 16 per cent., from 500 to 1,000 10 per cent., and in farms over 1,000 acres 2 per cent.

"In England alone a tendency to larger occupations may be noticed, the small farms of 50 acres and under being now 14 instead of 15 per cent. of the whole acreage, and the moderate-sized ones, between 50 and 300 acres, 54 per cent. against 56 per cent. in 1875; while farms over 300 acres amount to 32 per cent., or nearly a third of the cultivated area, as compared with 29 per cent. in 1875.

"In Scotland, however, the tendency is rather to an increase in occupations between 50 and 300 acres, which are now 59 per cent. against 58 per cent. in 1875; and the moderate-sized farms in Wales have also somewhat increased, so that, as before stated, the proportionate acreage for the whole of Great Britain is almost the same."

6. The advantage of association on the part of Tenant farmers is illustrated by the views taken of the prospects of farming by

agricultural meetings. Mr. Findlay Dun, a member of the Royal Agricultural Commission, has stated that to render English farming less precarious and more profitable it must be more diversified. Less dependence than heretofore must be placed upon arable culture, less wheat must be generally grown, more live stock must be reared and fed, and more dairying and vegetable and fruit culture must be prosecuted. Arable land of poor quality, which could not be fittingly laid down to grass, must be planted with larch, ash, and suitable timber. The old lands of England could not be economically farmed on the rough and ready cheap system successful enough in the Western States and territories of the New World. They required increasing capital, skill, and resource to extract from them the varied and often perishable food, which it was now desirable that they should produce.

Mr. James Howard, M.P., speaking at a meeting (Oct., 1880) of the Farmers' Alliance, has also observed that:

The proposals they had to consider were not akin to those which came to them from across St. George's Channel, but were such as to commend themselves to the judgment and approval of every unbiassed mind. "At the present time England presented to the world a very anomalous spectacle. We were the richest country in the world; we had a large accumulated capital which was seeking investment; we had a redundant population; we had a surplus of skilled agricultural labour of such quality as, perhaps, no other country possessed; and yet our fields were languishing for want of that very capital and labour of which we had such a superabundance. This was not only true of the present, but it was true, to a great extent of the past. Capital had long been repelled from agriculture by unwise Laws, restrictive Covenants, by Ganie reservations, by Insecurity of Tenure, by the absence of Legal right to Improvements, by impoverished Owners, by miserable Homesteads, and by undrained land." Those landowners who had pursued this course had, he believed, done so unwittingly; but they had, nevertheless, been sowing the wind; he hoped they would not reap the whirlwind.

The whole question is one which can only be settled by experience, and not by generalities. It is to be remembered that, against the virgin soil, summer heat rarely failing, and vast natural pastures of America, can be set off, here, greater abundance